China has had a remarkable period of rapid growth shifting from a centrally planned to a market based economy. Today, China is an upper middle-income country that has complex development needs, where the Bank continues to play an important development role.
Read More »

This report presents the outcome of the
World Bank's analytical and advisory work to assess the
status of water resources development and the key water
issues and challenges... Show More + facing the country. The Bank has also
reviewed its history of cooperation with the Government of
China in recent decades, and notes the remarkable
achievements China has made in developing the water sector.
The report proposes solutions for tackling the enormous
challenges facing China in the sector. The central priority
is to ensure sustainable utilization and management of
water, land and related resources at the national, basin,
regional and local levels. Despite relatively poor
endowments of land and water by international standards,
China's economy has developed extremely rapidly over
the last three decades, supporting 21 percent of the
world's population with 9 percent of the world's
arable land and only 6 percent of the world's water
while simultaneously lifting some 400 million people out of
poverty. It is noted in the national water resources master
plan recently completed by the Ministry of Water Resources
(MWR) and the National Development and Reform Commission
(NDRC) that China's water resources are under stress
from the combined demands of agriculture, industrialization,
urbanization, population increases and improving living
standards. The impact is evident in regional falling water
tables, inadequate flows to the environment, pollution, and
so on. Show Less -

This study is a joint effort of the
Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP), Chinese experts,
and the World Bank to inform the policy-making process in
line with... Show More + the government of Chinas medium- and long-term
objectives. Specifically the study aims to assist MEP,
provincial governments, and municipalities by: (1) Proposing
a national PM10 compliance plan to help non-compliant cities
attain grade II - preferably by 2015 or in certain cases by
2020 at the latest - and already compliant cities to further
reduce PM concentrations. The plan would include (a)
policies and regulations and associated physical
interventions/measures; (b) geographical scope; (c)
sequencing of interventions; and (d) feasible environmental
investments likely to have high benefit/cost ratios. (2)
recommending a PM2.5 monitoring system and related data applications. Show Less -

Recurring environmental incidents have
led to increased public awareness of the threats of
environmental pollution to public health and rapid
urbanization is driving... Show More + up land prices in Chinese cities. As
a result of these developments, industrial plant relocations
are numerous, particularly of heavily polluting industrial
plants, such as pesticide, coke, steel plants, and chemical
industry plants. These relocations are leaving behind many
contaminated sites in the cities, sometimes with various
pollutants, as well as complex and serious soil and
groundwater contamination. It has become increasingly clear
that China needs a comprehensive policy, regulatory,
technical, financial, and management framework to
effectively track, evaluate and clean up the numerous
contaminated sites. Currently, China has no specific law
regulating contaminated site remediation and management.
Soil protection provisions do exist in some generic
legislation, in the form of air and water protection laws,
solid waste laws, and toxic substance control acts. However,
due to their different objectives and scopes, they are often
aimed at different aspects of the issue. As a result,
existing provisions, even if fully implemented, may not
fully cover the whole range of threats related to site
contamination. Hence, learning from the experiences of other
countries is essential for the Chinese government to
increase its capacity and preparedness to manage issues
related to site contamination. Show Less -

The purpose of this report is to provide
an overview of the current situation of brownfield
management in China for World Bank staff and relevant
government officials... Show More + in order to help raise awareness of
land contamination and help develop remediation activities.
After the introductory section, section two explores the
environmental and development pressures of land. Section
three reviews government plans, targets and actions. Section
four discusses the regulatory framework for brownfield
remediation and redevelopment in China. Section five
analyzes organizational setup and management procedures, as
well as the stakeholders in brownfield management. Section
six offers a brief review of the status of brownfield
remediation technologies in China. Section seven looks at
the cases of Beijing and Chongqing. Finally, section eight
evaluates Chinese practices, discusses areas for
improvement, offers recommendations, and concludes the brief. Show Less -

A pattern of forest area loss followed
by a period of reforestation is representative of the forest
transition process. Forest transition has been observed in
many countries... Show More + and is a feature of the development process.
China reached its inflection point earlier and faster than
most other countries that have gone through the transition.
The report describes the success of reforms to forest
resource tenure in collective forest areas. These reforms,
which collectively amount to the largest transfer of forest
assets in history, have effectively extended forest
ownership to a million, mostly poor, rural households. These
reforms have increased forest-based incomes, have increased
timber harvests, and have done so sustainably by virtue of
increasing planting and forest management and resource
protection effort. The World Bank work in China's
forestry sector has been successful. However, the
developments discussed in this report raise new
opportunities and challenges. It is no longer clear, for
example, that World Bank loans are especially important in
relation to the financing of commercial plantations. While
the Bank has begun to move its plantation financing to
public goods, or ecological plantings, these are other
opportunities. This report brings together findings from
Bank-supported studies with experience gleaned from Bank
support of over $1 billion in forestry projects. Chapter one
introduces the contents and approach of the report. Chapter
two summarizes key data and information of China's
forest sector and resources. Chapter three presents findings
on collective forest tenure reform and chapter four,
potential forest supply. Chapter five concludes with
findings to clarify choices and options available to the
World Bank and China for moving ahead in forestry. Show Less -

In recent decades, China has achieved
rapid economic growth, industrialization, and urbanization.
Annual increases in GDP of 8 to 9 percent have lifted some
400 million... Show More + people out of dire poverty. Between 1979 and
2005, China moved up from a rank of 108th to 72nd on the
World Development Index. With further economic growth, most
of the remaining 200 million people living below one dollar
per day may soon escape from poverty. Although technological
change, urbanization, and China's high savings rate
suggest that continued rapid growth is feasible, the
resources that such growth demands and the environmental
pressures it brings have raised grave concerns about the
long-term sustainability and hidden costs of growth. Many of
these concerns are associated with the impacts of air and
water pollution. Show Less -

The objective of this assignment was to
develop a Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) system for
watershed management in the Loess Plateau area. The M&E
system for the China... Show More + Watershed Management Project (CWMP) has
been developed on the base of the M&E system that has
been implemented during the previous two phases of the World
Bank Loess Plateau Project. The final report presents the
main outcomes of this process. The major findings of the
M&E systems review are summarized in the following
chapter two. The steps of developing and agreeing the
M&E framework are presented in chapter three. Chapter
four will describe the specific features of and challenges
for watershed M&E before chapter five goes into a
detailed presentation of the M&E framework. The M&E
framework is most significant outcome of this assignment
because it brings together all the agreements and
considerations around institutional and methodological
issues of M&E. The key parameters for M&E are
defined in the framework, but they are further specified
into operational steps in the M&E guidelines which are
prepared as a separate document. Show Less -

These guidelines have three sections.
Section one provides food for thought, regarding poverty and
environment, and how the two are linked. Section two
provides practical... Show More + tools to incorporate the environment into
a village-level action plan for the environment. Section
three provides ideas for innovative activities relating to
the environment in poverty reduction programs. Finally two
practical checklists are provided: one for poverty reduction
managers who wish to monitor progress in incorporating
environment into staff work; and one for poverty reduction
staff involved into village poverty reduction plans. The
guidelines focus on Southwest China where poor areas are
mostly mountainous areas. In other parts of China where poor
areas are also arid areas, poverty reduction staff may use
these guidelines as a reference but will need to adjust
specific contents in section 2 to the different
environmental issues of the region they work in. Show Less -

This report is a summary of research
work coordinated by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) China in
2003-2005, to prepare Implementation Guidelines for Poverty
and Environment... Show More + Work (IGPEW) in China. This report describes
the research in two provinces, Yunnan and Sichuan, relating
to the government's on-going Village-Based Integrated
Poverty Reduction Plan for Poorer Western Regions. In
addition, an English version of the implementation
guidelines for poverty and environment work, and of the
checklist, has been prepared by combining the documents
produced in the two provinces. The research provides an
excellent basis to allow environmental concerns to become a
routine element in poverty reduction projects. Capacity at
all levels will be built through this process.The report
identifies a few points that will require attention, and the
provincial team outlines recommendations to facilitate the process. Show Less -